ent to kill him, will continue in
hell for a hundred years, and he who actually strikes him must endure a
thousand years."

It is always the truth that is mingled with the errors of any system
which constitutes its life and gives it perpetuity, and there is much in
the Code of Manu to be admired. Like the Confucian ethics, it laid its
foundations in the respect due from childhood to parents, and in
guarding the sanctities of the home. It aimed at fairness between ruler
and subject, in an age when over most of the Asiatic continent the
wildest caprice of rulers was the law of their respective realms. Manu
taught the duty of kings toward their subjects in most emphatic terms.
They were to regard themselves as servants, or rather as fathers, of the
people; and rules were prescribed for their entire conduct. They were
the representatives of deity in administering the affairs of mortals,
and must realize their solemn responsibility.[54] It must ever be
acknowledged that the Hindu laws respecting property were characterized
by wisdom and equity. Taxation was not subject to caprice or injustice;
where discriminations occurred they were in favor of the poor, and the
heaviest burdens were laid where they should be laid, upon the rich.
There were wise adaptations, calculated to develop the industry and
self-help of the weakest classes, and care was taken that they never
should become oppressive. No political or civic tyranny could be
allowed; but that of the priesthood in its relations to all ranks, and
that of the householder toward his wife and toward all women, were quite
sufficient. In this last regard we scarcely know which was the
greater--the heartless wickedness of the Code, or its blind and bigoted
folly. How it was that laws could be framed which indicated such rare
sagacity, which in many other respects were calculated to build up the
very highest civilization, and which, at the same time, failed to
foresee that this oppression of woman must result in the inevitable
degeneracy of succeeding generations of men, must ever remain a
mystery.[55]

We have glanced at the purer and simpler Aryanism of the early period,
at the bigoted, tyrannical Brahmanism, with its ritual, its sacrifices,
its caste. We have merely alluded to the rationalistic reaction of the
philosophers and the Buddhists. We shall now see that the Brahman power
is not broken, but that it will regain all and more than it has lost,
that it will prove elasti